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In early July the Royal Society began to announce the exhibitors for theÌýÌý2021ÌýExhibition, inevitably postponed from 2020. The Exhibition usually runs in early July every year and is visited by thousands of members of the public across all ages, particularly from secondary schools.

One team of exhibitors, including Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê Geography’s Professor Mat Disney, will look at the world of atmospheric CO_2Ìýin an exhibit calledÌýOur Breathing Earth: New views of the carbon cycle from space.

A joint venture between Mat,Ìý (University of Edinburgh) and (Plymouth Marine Laboratory), it will showcase work, inÌýpart with the , measuring and understanding the global carbon cycleÌýusing satellite, ground-based and marine observations.

It will show how satellites are providing a new and highly-detailed view of atmospheric greenhouse gases such as CO₂Ìýand methane, enabling the tracking of pollution, the quantification of forest carbon, and recording the dynamics of ocean carbon.

A team from Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê Geography, including Mat, Dr Phil Wilkes, Professor Philip Lewis and others, will be using VR demos of their 3D forest measurements to show how ground-based measurements underpin the satellite observations.

Having been previously involved a couple of times Mat says:

"The exhibition is always incredibly rewarding - you get to spend all week talking about your science to (mostly!) interested and often very knowledgeable people. I'm always amazed how many questions you get that might seem off-the-wall or even naive, but can really make you think about your work in a different way."

The movie below is a terrestrial lidar scan that Mat, Phil and Mat's PhD student Wanxin Yang captured on the Mall just outside the Royal Society. Mat's recent work with Phil and others has shown how this kind of measurement can be turned into new and improved estimates of forest carbon in the tropics, but also in so-called urban forests:

See